Table of Contents

Freenix64 14.2 Installation

The easiest way to obtain a free and libre Slackware flavor is by installing from our ISO image, which is a deblobbed version of the official Slackware ISO. We replaced the kernel with Linux-libre, removed other non-free bits, and adjusted slackpkg configuration to use our repository, while leaving everything else in place.

Download

Some browsers will open a torrent client when you click on a link above. Either way, you can copy the link location and paste it into a torrent client. If a torrent won't work for you for some reason, you can also get the ISO via HTTP.

Install

You can burn the iso image with a dvd burner of your choice, like k3b. If you are installing from a USB stick, convert the image first with

isohybrid -u image-name.iso

and then copy it to a USB device with

cp image-name.iso /dev/sdX

The installation process is essentially the same as for the stock Slackware. The only notable difference is that a single kernel package will supply both images (huge and generic) as well as the modules.

Switching to the Generic Kernel

Just as the latest iterations of the stock Slackware, the link /boot/vmlinuz points at the huge kernel by default, while the link /boot/vmlinuz-generic points at the generic kernel. You can follow the official instructions for building the initrd image and configuring lilo without changing a word.

Note also that you can switch to a generic kernel as early as during the installation phase, right after you quit the setup program, but before you reboot. You just have to settle for editing files with vi and prepending

chroot /mnt

when calling mkinitrd* and lilo.

Setting up slackpkg

No change here from the stock. As root, uncomment one and only one mirror in

/etc/slackpkg/mirrors

Obtain our signing key with

slackpkg update gpg

Optionally, you can check you got the right key with

gpg2 -k 0x473EB45F193340BC

After that you can issue the usual commands such as

slackpkg update

slackpkg upgrade-all

Mirrors

Here is the most up-to-date list of slackpkg mirrors intended for the end user support. If you want to build your own mirror, use rsync.

Extra Packages

We provide a collection of extra binary packages for the latest stable branch. These builds are based on scripts provided by SlackBuilds.org, with very similar dependencies and gotchas, so keep this in mind if you download and install them manually. If you are feeling very brave, you can help with testing freepkg, our in-house package manager (signed), but please be advised it is highly experimental.

Source Code

The highlights include the rsync blacklist we use when pulling from the (non-free) stock repository. The purpose of the list is to trim all non-free bits so early that they never get a chance to arrive at our production host. We are highly concerned with the accuracy and the currency of this list, so you would do us a great favor by helping us improve it.

Another important piece of code is the deployment script which assembles the free repository in real time by taking the trimmed free mirror as a starting point.